Administrator and Moderator Rules
This page covers the additional rules and information that all administrators and moderators should know. Banning Rules *'Banning is NOT a first option and should ALWAYS be the last resort.' If a user is misbehaving on chat, you MUST give warnings. The ONLY exception for this rule is if the user is a troll. More information on trolls will be covered later. *'Like we covered in the General Rules and Guidelines, ban times must be reasonable.' Here's an example situation. Say you're a mod or an admin (if you're on this page, you probably are), and a user is misbehaving. The user has already spammed the chat with emoticons, and they are not listening to your warnings. You click their name on the user rail, and select Ban. How long do you ban them for? Start with two hours. Unless the user is a troll, (we'll cover this later) this is the best way to deal with this behavior. Start with two hours, and allow them to return to the chat. If they continue to misbehave, block them for the next highest time. You may continue this routine until the misbehavior ends, however it's unacceptable to ban for infinite in these situations unless the user is a troll. *'Show a bit of mercy and give warnings first.' This is always something that should be done, with the exception of a user being a troll. Kicking Rules *'Why do we kick users, and not just ban them?' This brings us back to the warnings topic. Warnings can and SHOULD include kicks! You're not going to get through to a user by saying to them "This is your first warning, do not continue this behavior". This just doesn't work. You can kick the user for misbehavior. *'Warnings, and how many.' We have discussed that generally a kick should be the warning. How many warnings can we give them? Two. Users should not need eight million warnings, and they will not receive them. Two warnings should be quite enough. If the user will not take the warnings, ban them. (See Banning rules, above.) Blocking Rules *'Don't block as a first resort. ' Leave the user a warning on their message wall, unless it's clearly vandalism. In that case, you can block the user by going to their Contributions page. *'Reasonable block times.' This is similar to the reasonable ban times concept, except for the fact that only admins can do this, and it's a block, not a ban. (Obvi.) How to Deal With Trolls *'Don't ban just because of a username.' Unless the username is inappropriate, wait for evidence that the user is a troll. If users report that a troll is harassing them via PM, don't do anything except tell the user to block the PM. Admins/mods should not believe this unless screenshots are given and there is proof that the user is a troll and the screenshot is legitimate. If the user is trolling on the main chat, block them immediately, and for infinite. *'Understand the difference between trolls and sockpuppets.' Trolls are users who spam, are rude to users, and don't take warnings, etc. Sockpuppets are users who have been banned on another account who have created the new one to evade the ban.